Bad days, good days
by Izzie Duquette
Summary: A story about how Izzie feels one year after Denny's death. Pretty sad at some point in time and reeeaaaally Izzie centered! It's my first fanfic ever, so please review! And be gentle, English isn't my first language.


Bad days, good days

Meredith's fingers were itching. Wasn't there something, anything, to do in this house? She sighed. When Derek had first given her the day off, she had been excited. Just the look on George's face had made her day. "But… but why is SHE getting tomorrow off and not me? I've asked at least a dozen times! Why?", he asked incredulously. Cristina hadn't even looked at him when she answered. "Because you whined, George. Sounds really annoying. Besides that, Meredith has been working straight on for the last two weeks, so she deserved it so much more than you. And of course it helps to have sex with your boss."

Now Meredith was at home, trying to enjoy her first day off in two weeks- but it just wouldn't work. OK now, she said to herself, what do you usually do when you don't work? Sleep. Done that. Sleep with Derek. Done that, too, last night, and boy, was it good… She got lost in that memory for a second. Anyways. Meredith shook her head. He was working now, as were all her friends she could spend her quality free time with. She went from her room into the living room and flipped through the pages of a magazine. An ad appeared, with a smiling housewife holding a broom in a perfectly shiny kitchen.

That was it! What a great idea! Meredith was so excited she actually let out a little squeak. Why hadn't it come to her earlier? She had hours on hand and the house needed to be cleaned- desperately. Of course, it didn't sound like fun at the first moment, but Meredith was getting more and more into the idea of being a shiny housewife. Why not clean if she felt like it? Very proud of herself, she jumped from the couch and went searching for a broom or anything else to start the cleaning project with. Now that she was at it, all made perfect sense. Not only would Izzie and George be very impressed, but Derek, Cristina and Burke were coming over for dinner, too.

Normal people clean the house when they expect guests, don't they?, Meredith thought to herself. So why wouldn't I? She could nearly hear Izzie's response to that question. "Because you hardly ever do any housework. I am the one who cleans everything up. Sometimes George does a little something. But it's hardly ever you. You wouldn't even know where to find a broom." Well, her friends were helping, because they paid a ridiculously low rent. Besides that, Izzie was totally exaggerating! Meredith stopped rummaging through the back hall closet, hands on her hips and slightly annoyed about the fact that she still couldn't find anything to clean. Where exactly do we keep all that stuff?

Four hours later

Meredith was standing on the first floor, looking downstairs and was quite impressed with herself. She did a great job with the living room and there were simply no words for the way the kitchen looked. The thought that people would cook, or more probably bake in that kitchen any time soon and get it all dirty again was a little irritating to her, but then again, she couldn't do anything about it. Of course, the three of them could just live on take-out food forever, that was no problem at all. But Meredith knew full well that she could not stop Izzie from baking muffins.

Thinking about it, she didn't want to do that either. Izzie had been through a really tough time. Denny had died a little over a year ago. The first time after his death had been horrible for Izzie. Meredith shivered just from thinking about how worried she and George and everyone else they knew had been about their friend. Izzie wouldn't move, she wouldn't talk, sleep, drink or eat and sometimes it seemed like she would stop breathing the next second, out of sheer will power. After about three weeks, Izzie started baking. Well, that was the understatement of the year, Meredith thought. There were muffins everywhere. Luckily, Izzie had gotten through that period, too. She was still grieving of course. On a bad day Meredith could see the pain in her friend's eyes. But there were less and less bad days, in the last two months there had been only one. Izzie's feelings on those days varied, sometimes she simply wouldn't talk, sometimes cry for hours and sometimes she would just scream at everyone and everything.

There were basically three kinds of bad days, categorized by their triggers. There were the bad days caused by something obvious, mostly dates. Everyone who knew Izzie knew in advance that those days were coming, as for example the anniversary of the day Denny and Izzie met for the first time, of Denny's and Izzie's first kiss and , of course, the date that Denny had died. Sometimes, bad days came suddenly. One of the patients Izzie had grown fond of died, somebody in the hospital threw an engagement party or a girl on TV wore a pink Prom dress. The third category was the worst: The "secret" bad days. They were not triggered by any outside influence, but by something inside of Izzie. That could be a dream or a connection she made to a song on the radio and sometimes, Meredith assumed, they had no trigger at all. Sometimes they were also the aftermath of a previous bad day. Izzie would seem fine again and if you didn't know her really well and paid close attention you could not see that something was wrong. The problem with those "secret" days was that Izzie would completely keep to herself that something was wrong. She didn't want anyone to know that something was going on, although bottling it all up inside her wasn't good for her. She usually broke down at some point during those days and then her friends would find out anyway.

Meredith, George, Alex and Cristina had agreed on that categorizing system a while ago, as it was easier that way to get help for Izzie or clarify that she should be left alone. A short "Izzie's got a sudden one" on the phone and someone would come over with tissues and ice cream.

Apart from those bad days, Izzie was back to her normal self. She wasn't as perky as she used to be and the famous sparkle had yet to return into her eyes, but she had returned to work and she smiled and laughed a lot. Meredith was hoping that Izzie had gotten over Denny's death and that there would never be a bad day again.

Yeah, right. Meredith shook her head, knowing that that was way too much to expect. But she still wanted to do something for Izzie. Without further thinking, she decided to clean her friend's room. It could probably need a good dusting job, just like the rest of the house.

After Meredith had thrown all the shirts and pants which were lying around into the laundry basket, watered Izzie's flowers, and washed her windows she vacuumed the whole room. Then she started dusting off her friend's shelves that were stacked with novels and cookbooks. She was just about to put the duster away and finish her work when she realized a flat box that had apparently fallen behind the shelf. Meredith was curious. She went to the side of the shelf and stretched out as far as she could to grab the box. When she pulled her arm back and realized what it was she cringed. What Meredith had found there had not fallen behind the shelf by accident, it had been hidden away on purpose. In her hands was Izzie's only Scrabble game.


End file.
